Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies by Hadley Freeman

An engaging collection of essays aims to put the world to rights

R
eading this memoir-cum-conversation is like sitting in a pub with a group of
girlfriends, setting the world to rights and suddenly becoming aware of
another group talking about the same issues — hair removal, abortion, the
tyranny of tiny knickers, the state of female sexuality — only they are more
raucous, cooler, ruder and more intellectually engaged.

The success of Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman has prompted publishers to
scour the sisterhood for funny gals ­talking about women’s issues in an
engagingly bookish way. Be Awesome, by the Guardian columnist Hadley
Freeman, is first up, but whereas Moran’s memoir had that intangible sense
of the incredibly important drunken conspiracy, and the post-midnight
revelatory clarity that’s even more real the next morning, Freeman’s is just
that bit tidier: feminism that wants to be home in time for a good night’s
sleep.